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Forum Discussion
Make online only does absolutely nothing on Windows 11.
I'm syncing my pictures and documents folders to dropbox via backup (windows 11). I want to make a few large folders in pictures to be online only as i don't use them much so don't need them taking space on my local drive. However, when i select a folder and do dropbox > make online-only, it does absolutely nothing. it starts syncing, the icons on the files briefly change from the green tick to grey cloud but after a while, everything is back to being green. all the files are still available locally and has no effect on the disk space.
This feature used to work fine but seems to completely broken.
Alright, found the issue. Theres a .lock file inside the folder created by the nvidia app (used by the nvidia overlay for storing screenshots and videos). Dropbox is unable to sync this file as its being used by the nvidia app at all times. stopping all nvidia app processes deleted this file and dropbox started working as normal. however, this isn't something i want to do every time. is there a way to get dropbox to stop trying to sync .lock files? the file name seems to be random every time nvidia app starts e.g. .lock_16296. The moment dropbox encounters this sync issue, it starts downloading all the files back, even the ones marked as online only.
- Megan
Dropbox Staff
Hey aave, welcome to our Community!
I'm not entirely sure we have a way to ignore these files, especially since they are created each time you open the app.
It sounds like the Nvidia app files are causing that to happen.
However, it doesn't hurt to have a look at our ignore feature, and test to see if this works out for you. I'm not 100% set it would work, since the app creates a new file each time, but it doesn't hurt to try it out.
Thanks!
I did look at ignore. since the file is created by and constantly open in nvidia app, the Set-Command throws an error. Don't think .dropboxignore is a thing yet but that would be very handy in this case.
tbh, it would be fine if dropbox is unable to do anything with the lock file, however, it starts downloading all online only files+folders back to my PC the moment it runs into sync issues.
